Lucy didn’t think that there could be anything worse than going home for the holidays. But now, she would give anything to be sat in front of a plate of dry turkey and boiled vegetables at a table of bland, tired Catholics who confuse rye and conflict for tradition. But preferable to this, does not mean it was “good” by any means. It still meant taking time off she couldn’t afford, just to spend half of it in transit and half spent avoiding her mother’s glare at the dinner table— a plea (albeit, an aggressive one) that Lucy wouldn’t get involved with any political discussion and “ruin the holiday”... again. But four Millers in, her aunt’s husband (a police officer), started blundering through a string of half-remembered talking points that all started with “those people”.
She sure as hell didn’t come halfway across the country to listen to some forty-eight year old prick grumble a bunch of racist shit at the dinner table because the Patriots lost. Voices were raised. A spoon was brandished like a knife. One thing led to another, and Lucy found herself driving to a Wal-Mart at eight o’ clock on Christmas Eve picking up the whipped cream her mother “forgot”, which was fine by her. It was time for the annual “getting closer to thirty, and still no husband” conversation, and she was more than happy to be absent when it did.
It was not the strange glow of the fluorescent lights that first caught Lucy’s attention, but just how empty it was. It was Christmas Eve, so she hadn’t expected it to be packed. But still- she had never been in an empty Wal-Mart before. It was the only place open for miles— surely someone else had forgotten something, or run into some sort of emergency. But no. Save the cashier, and the security guard conversing with him, totally empty.
Their eyes fixed on Lucy as she passed, necks snapped towards her at attention— like rabbits, frozen, waiting to see if she identified herself as a predator or an element of their surroundings. Lucy smiled to be polite. It was Christmas, after all.
That should’ve been when she noticed that this place felt wrong. But it wasn’t. Nor was her discovery that the section labeled “Dairy” was full of free weights and yoga mats. Having shoplifted from quite a few Wal-Marts in her day, Lucy felt she had a pretty good handle on how they're supposed to look. They're all laid out pretty much on the same grid. Here, though, there was a stack of graphic tees neatly folded atop bags of frozen carrots and peas. The sign above the freezer read “desserts”. The lights were beginning to give Lucy a migraine. Had she not been focusing so intently on keeping her jaw unclenched, Lucy would have realized that her nose had started to bleed.
Suddenly, Lucy felt nervous— as if she was being watched. Turning around revealed that this was indeed the case. The stout woman in a blue vest— standing entirely too close asked,
“Is there anything I can help you with?”
She flashed a smile that made Lucy feel like fluorescent lighting. It was disorienting— illuminating but still cold and lifeless. Lucy hated those lights— and she wanted to hate that woman’s smile. But instead, it filled her with dread. She couldn’t help but feel that if she asked this woman for help, something terrible would happen.
Lucy shook my head “no” and hurried down the aisle. Though she did not turn back, Lucy could feel that the woman was no longer smiling.
The aisle Lucy found herself in was marked “school supplies”. Bags of flour, boxes of pasta, and other dry goods lined the shelves. Though Lucy saw straight through to the other side before entering, “school supplies” seems to twist and grow the farther she walked. She heard a low grumbling, and turned around. A man pushing a shopping cart, piled high with clothes, electronics, and home goods muttered to himself, as he reached for a box of rotini on the top shelf. He was gaunt, and looked exhausted.
“Excuse me, can you help me?” Lucy said, any optimism she might've had already sapped away by the man’s troubling demeanor. When he looked up, Lucy noticed that his eyes were red and swollen, as if he had been weeping for a very, very long time. Lucy decided she had been right not to hope.
The man stared at Lucy with blank, instinctively fearful eyes for a moment. But when she took a step towards him, emotion rushed back. His face curled, in what seemed to be rage, before it settled on panic.
“Go away!” he shouted, “I saw them first!”
Before Lucy could react, the man tore down the aisle, packages of socks and a toolbox falling from his cart as he went. On impact, the tool set opened. Instead of the screwdrivers and measuring tape advertised on the packaging, the case contained nothing but sawdust. Lucy began to feel sick. The boxes of pasta were full of it, too.
The next time Lucy saw someone pushing a cart, she did not approach them, or make her presence known. She knew now that to go unnoticed was best.
“What did I come here for?” she thought, “A sale? No. Whipped cream. For dessert.” Her mother probably had whipped cream in the fridge. She probably only sent Lucy out to buy some, because she couldn’t handle a little conflict. Lucy decided that she resented her mother.
The fluorescent light beat down, obscuring the numbers on the aisle signs. Was it always this bright? Lucy couldn’t be sure. She didn’t trust anything about this place.
The security guard began to walk towards where Lucy thought the entrance was at a leisurely pace. She followed. If she convinced herself this nightmare had an end, maybe it would. Maybe she would get to the cash register, rack up a smidge more debt, and head back to her parents’ house. She knew she was foolish to pretend. She recognized nothing on the shelves they had passed, and she did not know hope.
The guard had slowed, closing the gap between them. Lucy had been dawdling, distracted by the shelves and the way that they seemed to warp, craning themselves towards her ever so subtly – the same way that a student might cheat on a test, carefully, to avoid the paper’s owner, as well as the teacher’s eye. She felt like something to be studied. She didn’t like it, and was sure the security guard knew she was tailing him. She was certain he could sense her apprehension. She decided to drop the act.
“This isn’t the way to the register,” Lucy said, “so where are you taking me?”
The guard missed a step, taken aback by the idea that she was able to do anything but follow.
“Not the ones in the front,” he snarled, “too close to the doors. Too easy for you to get away without paying. We’ve had runners before.” And as if he could sense Lucy’s unease, he added, “Sorry, store policy.”
What he didn’t know was that Lucy had been stealing from Wal-Mart since she was 15. She’d stolen from at least a dozen, a dozen times over; including this one. She’d been caught before, not often, but caught nonetheless. This was not store policy. The security guard was counting on complacency. And that was a mistake.
Her head pounding, Lucy became overwhelmed with the feeling that this was to last forever. Her vision began to blur. The security guard began to laugh.
Lucy yanked the fire extinguisher off of the support beam beside her, and brought it down on the Laughing Man’s head. Anything to stop the laughing. His head was much softer than one would expect. For a moment, Lucy worried that she had killed him. But he continued to laugh.
The Laughing Man stopped for a breath, and wheezed. “Oh. You know you’re going to have to pay for these damages, don’t you?” he asked, flatly. He turned to face Lucy, slowly- and she cried out.
The side of the face where she hit him had started to crumble, collapsing in on itself like wet sand. He didn’t seem to notice as bits sloughed off of his face, falling to the floor. The Laughing Man’s entire face slumped to the damaged side, and his speech became slurred:
“I had hoped I was wrong, but I guess I was right— you are a criminal, and criminals must be punished.”
The lights overhead grew brighter and brighter still. It would be enough to give anyone a migraine under normal circumstances. But this was not that. This would not stop. This was to be forever. His laughing became nasal and arhythmic. His mouth, gaping. As it went, it grew louder and louder. Lucy was nauseous.
If this was to be her fate — forever, in this place— Lucy refused to share it with someone whose laugh sounded like that. She raised the fire extinguisher over my head, and brought it down hard. Again and again, until expectation and reality met.
And suddenly, the shelves were shelves again. They were no longer reaching out for her. What had been the Laughing Man shuddered as if trying to draw breath. But it was a pile of sawdust now, not the Laughing Man, and sawdust does not breathe. Lucy was certain of that. Lucy was certain, again. Certain that she hated Christmas. Certain that she had been wrong before— there were worse things than spending it with her family. She could see the doors in the distance. She was certain they would not open. She could read the clock, mounted on the wall above them. It insisted she had only been in the store for fifteen minutes, and she was certain that it lied.
.
Originally published on HARD NOISE, 2019.